Hacking, malware top data breach incidents: Beazley

Hacking or malware accounted for 34% of the 2,013 data breach incidents addressed by Beazley Breach Response Services during the first three-quarters of this year, London-based Beazley P.L.C. said in a report Tuesday.

The breach response unit said in its Beazley Breach Insights Report – October 2017 that this was followed by unintended disclosure, which accounted for 29% of the incidents.

Social engineering, or data breaches based on deception, accounted for 9% of the total, which was an increase from the 1% of the total reported for the comparable period in 2016, according to the report.

Beazley said the two most prevalent types of incidents are fraudulent instruction incidents, in which a criminal impersonates a trusted party such as a company executive, and W-2 scams.

Other causes of data breaches involved portable devices and physical loss/nonelectronic records, at 6% each, and payment card fraud at 1%, with unknown or “other” accounting for the remaining 6%.